


there's a place for you under my fingertips

by rsadelle



Category: Everything I Never Told You - Celeste Ng
Genre: Body Worship, Developing Relationship, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-15 19:15:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13037649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rsadelle/pseuds/rsadelle
Summary: The first afternoon in their new apartment, and how they got there.





	there's a place for you under my fingertips

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dasyatidae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dasyatidae/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, dasyatidae! I hope you enjoy this.
> 
> Title from Patti Scialfa's "23rd Street Lullaby."

"Let me," Jack says. He puts his hands on the hem of Nath's t-shirt, and Nath lets his drop away, lets Jack be the one to pull the t-shirt over his head and off to be dropped away.

It is the first afternoon in their new apartment. They arrived late in the morning. They carried their things up from Jack's Beetle, packed to the brim with their clothes and books, Nath's telescope and the plates Jack's mother gave them. They had lunch at the diner around the corner and came back to unpack.

In the midst of this activity, they looked up at each other, across the expanse of the apartment and each separately felt the monumental nature of the choices they had made. It is a small apartment where two steps on each of their parts brought them together at the threshold of the bedroom.

Nath reached out first, his hands settling on Jack's hips as Jack leaned in and a little down to kiss him.

"Let me," Jack says, and Nath does.

 

Nath's mother and father together drove him to the airport to fly away to Harvard. Hannah sat in the back seat of the car with Nath, nearly vibrating with the excitement of being allowed to go along. She felt, too, as they all did, that this drive was as much a dividing line between _before_ and _after_ as Lydia's death was.

Nath felt, but did not mention, Lydia's absence as he said goodbye to his family and boarded the plane. There was a feeling almost like free fall as he took his seat, the sensation of dropping into a new world, of leaving everything he knew behind.

It was not so easy to let go so completely of his family. His parents sent letters that asked questions that, he felt, he must answer. Hannah sent letters full of news that wasn't news: _"We had pancakes for breakfast," "The leaves are changing colors," "It snowed for the first time today."_

Nath wrote back sparingly. 

His heart sank when he opened the last letter of the semester and saw the bus ticket home for the break. He put it aside and took his exams, only touching the bus ticket when he absolutely had to.

At home, Nath felt the absence of Lydia, but also something more, something he didn't know how to name. What he felt was not unlike what so many college students felt as they came home for the first time: the return to a house that has gone on without them and works too hard to fit them into the space left now.

On a clear, cold afternoon that first Christmas break, Nath walked down the street, a familiar walk turned new after a semester away. He went to the lake, skirted around the icy edges of it, and walked out to the end of the dock.

He stared out over the lake, the lake he didn't drown in and Lydia did. He was there for a long time.

He didn't turn when there were footsteps, human and animal both, behind him, stood staring until Jack and his dog fetched up next to him.

They stood together without speaking for another long time, Jack's dog alternately sitting beside them and trotting up and down the dock to keep warm.

"It's cold," Jack said. "You should go inside."

Nath turned to look at him, both of them grown into men in the time since the summer, or so they felt themselves to be. Jack wasn't wearing a coat, just a sweatshirt. If Nath was cold, he had to be freezing.

"I don't want to go home," Nath said, the first time he'd said it to anyone in all the time it had been true. Lydia would have understood without him needing to say it.

"Come to my house," Jack said, as if it were that easy. And maybe it was; in the moment, it was.

The warmth was the first thing Nath noticed about Jack's house. It reached out and pulled him in, making him feel just how cold he had been outside.

Jack's dog rushed into the house. Jack paused to kick off his shoes and hang up his sweatshirt. Nath left his shoes next to Jack's and his coat next to Jack's sweatshirt and followed them into the kitchen.

Jack sat across from Nath, both of them warming their hands around cups of cocoa Jack made from Swiss Miss packets. Nath had never been in Jack's house before; he tried not to look too obviously for the differences from his own.

"Do you like Harvard?" Jack asked.

Nath said, "Yes," and then he said it again, more firmly. He found himself talking to Jack, really talking to him. He talked about Harvard, about the libraries full of books that would help him get to space, about making friends for the first time in his life.

He hadn't said all of that to anyone else, and he found himself surprised to be saying it to Jack.

For his part, Jack drank it in and asked questions that kept Nath talking. It was as much as he had ever been permitted to know about Nath. It filled in all the gaps that Lydia had left out or not known, and all the new shades that had become a part of Nath in the semester he had been gone.

"I didn't ask what you're doing," Nath said after they'd been talking for a while, turning his now empty cup in his hands.

Jack returned confidence for confidence. "My mom wanted me to go to college, but," he shrugged, "I don't think it's for me. I've been working for a contractor in town, doing construction." He turned his hands palm up long enough for Nath to see that they'd become work-roughened.

"Do you like it?" Nath asked.

Jack wrapped his hands around his cup, although it was empty. "It's good to do something that has a result at the end," he said. "I don't know if I want to do it forever."

 

Now Jack slides his work-roughened hands over Nath's shoulders and down his arms. Their hands rest together for a moment, rough and smooth tangled together while Jack angles his head down for a kiss that Nath gives willingly.

Their hands part. When Nath's reach for Jack, he touches them, the lightest brush of his fingers over Nath's skin, and says, again, "Let me."

Nath meets his eyes, and Jack knows that some would say that Nath's eyes are black and unreadable. To him, they are anything but. He can see the desire to touch, to reach out, and also the willingness to let Jack be the one to do so.

They breathe against each other's mouths for a suspended moment. Jack kisses Nath again, his mouth soft against Nath's, every touch of his tongue to Nath's a question and an answer all in one.

Jack runs his hands back up Nath's arms, soft, touching every inch of his skin. He runs them over Nath's shoulders, down his back. He holds Nath close, bends to press kisses against his neck, scatter them across his chest.

"Jack," Nath says, voice like a prayer.

Jack closes his eyes, too much to take all at once when he thought he would never have the chance to have any of it.

There are words Jack doesn't say, but he presses them into Nath's skin with his hands and his mouth all the same.

 

That first conversation led to others. Nath would leave the house when Jack took his dog for a walk and walk with them, or Nath would leave the house first and Jack and his dog would find them. They spent evenings at Jack's house, Nath making the short trip in the cold to escape the press of his family.

They were alone those evenings, when Jack's mother had gone to her shift at the hospital and Nath's family had been appeased by his presence at dinner. Most days they talked, wide-ranging conversations about music and movies, friends and politics, space travel and construction trends.

It was the kind of relationship Nath had never had with another person. There was none of the wordless understanding borne of shared circumstances that he'd had with Lydia, but neither was the feeling that he was starting from nothing that he'd had making friends at Harvard.

It was more familiar to Jack, who'd always had friends. And yet, it was different, too, because it was Nath, and sometimes that knowledge made his breath catch. He had wanted, for so long, and the feeling of having some part of what he wanted nearly overwhelmed him.

"Lydia talked about you," Jack said on the last evening before Nath was set to go back to school. They were sitting on the couch in Jack's house, drinking cups of cocoa while the dog slept draped over and around their feet. Jack turned his head, so he wasn't looking directly at Nath and confessed, "I asked about you."

In profile, Nath could see the bump on the bridge of Jack's nose that was the result of what he'd done not so many months earlier. He wanted something different. He wanted to touch it, trace the line of Jack's nose with his fingers.

It was a big thing to know in a small moment on a couch in early January with snow falling outside and a mug of hot cocoa in his hands.

He was silent too long, and Jack looked down, then fully away.

Nath made a noise, a protest, a no in the back of his throat. He put the cocoa down. He reached out, watching his own hand as if he wasn't quite in control of it, and touched Jack's cheek to turn his face toward him.

Jack closed his eyes, and leaned fractionally into the touch.

His eyes opened a moment later, when he remembered he wasn't supposed to do that, but Nath wasn't supposed to be touching him and he was.

Nath moved closer, and then Jack did, the two of them moving in careful inches until they were close, so close that Nath could see the precise outlines of the freckles on Jack's cheek, so close that Jack could almost taste the cocoa on Nath's exhale.

Nath closed the last of the space between them, the kind of leap of terrifying bravery into where he knew he had to be that had led him to confess to a school counselor that he wanted to go to outer space. He brushed his lips over Jack's.

Jack made a sound like a plea, like a strangled sob, and he pressed into the kiss.

Their eyes fell closed and they stayed there for a minute, two, Nath's hand on Jack's cheek and their lips meeting in a kiss neither of them had ever truly expected to happen.

Jack's shock wore away into exultant triumph, a joy so great he felt as if he might simply float away. He anchored himself with both hands on Nath, one on his shoulder, one on the back of his head so he couldn't move away.

Nath only hitched closer, until their thighs were touching on the couch and the dog had to move and resettle himself onto their newly positioned feet. He'd never felt anything like what he felt kissing Jack. It was something like the unmistakable presence in his body he felt when he swam, something like the fascination he felt when he looked through his telescope, and something like the certainty he felt when he studied. And yet it was none of those things, exactly.

Jack gasped Nath's name. Nath kissed it off his lips.

They kissed for an endless time. They kissed until their lips were sore. They kissed until the cocoa had gone cold. They kissed until the world outside was covered with a fresh powdering of snow.

"You're leaving tomorrow," Jack said, their foreheads pressed together and lips apart. "Write to me." He'd meant it to be a demand, or a request, but it came out as a desperate plea.

"Yes," Nath said. "Yes, I promise." He kissed Jack again, and again at the door before Jack opened it and he had to step out into the cold.

 

Jack nudges Nath with gentle hands, and Nath turns for him, letting Jack look at the golden expanse of his back. Jack explores every inch of this too. He brushes his fingers over the knobs of Nath's spine, kisses down the line of one shoulder blade and up the other. He kneels to press open-mouthed kisses to the small of Nath's back.

At another gentle press of Jack's hands, Nath turns, stepping carefully. He looks down at Jack, and he has to touch. He runs his hand through Jack's hair.

Jack lets him, presses his face to Nath's stomach while Nath runs his hand over and over his hair.

Jack kisses the skin in front of him, the tight muscle of Nath's abdomen, and tilts his head up. He smiles, and Nath smiles back, and they pause there smiling at each other for a moment until Jack takes Nath's hand, kisses his palm, and lets it drop to Nath's side again.

 

They wrote letters. Nath wrote the first one, the day he returned to Harvard. After he'd met up with a few friends for dinner, and after he'd talked to Kevin, his roommate, about their Christmas breaks. Then he sat at the desk in his room with a piece of paper and wrote to Jack about the way Boston's snow was different and the record Kevin got for Christmas and was playing in the common area. He said, _I'm glad about last night_ , at the end.

Jack wrote back the same day Nath's letter arrived, Jack's name clear on the outside of the envelope so there could be no mistake that it was meant for the Lees down the street. He said, _I'm glad too_ , right at the beginning of his letter.

Eight hundred miles apart, they each cherished those letters. They grasped them in their hands, holding on tight but careful so as not to crumple them. They hoarded their happiness in them, each of them carrying them to their rooms to read them alone, to savor them and the connection they built.

Jack took the bold step of writing, _I want to visit you._

They arranged it through a series of letters. On a Friday in March, Jack left his house very early in the morning. He drove all day across the country and arrived in Boston long after it had grown dark.

Nath's roommate had gone home for the weekend. Nath found himself unable to settle, waiting for Jack to arrive. He opened a textbook only to close it again.

He jumped when the knock came on his door. He opened it and caught his breath when he saw Jack standing there with a duffel bag over his shoulder.

Nath didn't trust himself to touch Jack in the hallway where there were people around. He let Jack in, closed and locked the door behind him. He took Jack into his room, closed and locked that door too. Only then did he reach out for Jack.

Jack fell against him. They clung to each other for an endless time.

"I missed you," Nath said hoarsely.

Jack brought his hands up to cup Nath's face. "I'm here."

They fell into a kiss that came with the frenzied movement of hands racing to touch, to feel each other's solid reality.

Jack took the step of moving his lips to Nath's neck and saying, "I want to do more than kiss you."

A shiver went all through Nath. "Yes. I want that too."

They were clumsy, as it was the first time either of them had done anything like that with another man. It was good, too, as it was the first time either of them had done anything like that in a way that felt so right.

 

From his knees, Jack unbuttons Nath's jeans. He presses a kiss to the small sliver of skin that exposes. He looks up at Nath, to watch his face while he draws the zipper down. The look there is one he once thought he would never have a chance to see, not from Nath. It's tenderness and want.

Jack looks away from it so he can pull Nath's jeans down. Nath steps out of them, and Jack tosses them aside. He slips off Nath's socks while he's there, and then looks up at Nath clothed only in his briefs.

Nath is hard. There's a damp spot where the tip of his dick is pressed against the cotton of his briefs. If he were alone, if they were doing anything other than what they are now, he would reach for himself. But this is what Jack wants, and right now, he's willing to give Jack anything.

Jack cups his hands around the back of Nath's ankles and bends down to kiss the top of each of his feet.

Nath's knees tremble, and so does his voice when he says, "Jack."

Jack stays for a moment longer, bent over Nath's feet, before he sits up and looks up the length of Nath's body. His voice, when he says Nath's name, is firm and certain.

 

May 3, 1978, the one-year anniversary of the day they knew Lydia was missing, fell on a Wednesday. Nath knew the date, and he walked around all day remembering the day a year earlier.

After dinner, he picked up the phone and made a rare long-distance phone call.

He didn't feel the tears in his eyes until he heard a familiar voice say, "Wolff residence."

There was a long moment of listening silence before Nath said, "Jack."

Jack drew in a breath, loud enough to be heard over the line. "Nath."

Nath swiped at the tears skipping down his cheeks. "Hi."

Jack took in another breath, wet because there were tears in his eyes too. "Hi. I miss you."

Nath breathed out harshly. "I wish I could be with you today." It was strange, to want that, when he'd been so convinced a year ago that Jack had had something to do with Lydia's disappearance.

"Yeah," Jack said. "Yeah."

They were silent again.

"I miss her." Nath wiped more tears from his cheeks. "She was-" He broke off, no way to say what Lydia was to him.

"She was the one who knew what your family was like," Jack said.

It was such a perfect, unexpected explanation that Nath let out a sob, and then another. He pressed his face into the curve of his elbow to stifle the sound. It was something he could share with Jack, but not with anyone who might be walking by.

They didn't say much else to each other, quiet goodbyes and I miss yous before they reluctantly hung up their phones.

Nath went back to his room, passing Kevin without speaking, and lay in the dark for a long time before he could sleep.

Thursday was more of a normal day, the loss not quite as sharp as on the anniversary. Friday was better still, and he had plans to go to a party that evening.

On Friday afternoon, before he'd started getting ready for the party, before he and Kevin had even decided what to do for dinner before the party, there was a knock on their half-open door and Nath looked up to see Jack in the doorway.

He blinked, to be sure it really was Jack, that his heart wasn't playing tricks on him.

It was Jack.

There was a still moment when nothing seemed to move, not even Nath's lungs, and then he breathed in a rush and introduced Jack to Kevin.

Nath and Jack left the dorm and took a walk. It was a warm spring afternoon, so different from the cold weekend of Jack's first visit.

Without knowing it, they traced some of the same paths Nath's parents had walked on the first day they met. Two young people, a generation later, stopping on the same footbridge and barely letting their hands brush as they rested them against the rail.

"I'm glad you're here," Nath said, and Jack, aching to touch him but knowing he couldn't, not there, said, "I had to come."

They drifted across the campus, along the river, into a restaurant for dinner. They walked purposefully back to Nath's room, where Kevin had left for the party Nath had nearly forgotten about except that it meant he and Jack would be alone.

They locked the door of Nath's bedroom behind themselves. Then they were free to touch. Nath leaned into Jack, letting himself lean on Jack the way he'd never had anyone to lean on before.

In Jack's arms, Nath cried again, missing Lydia and so happy to be with Jack. Jack, too, had tears slipping down his cheeks. He cupped Nath's face in his hands. Both their lips were salty with their tears when they kissed.

They were gentle with each other as they sank slowly onto the bed.

 

Jack slides his hands up the back of Nath's legs, from his ankles to his knees. He goes slowly, feeling every inch of Nath's skin, caressing the gentle curves of his calves. He lets his hands rest in the bend of Nath's knees.

He bends and kisses Nath's ankles. He moves up, leaving kisses on Nath's shins, up to his knees. There he pauses, his mouth resting against Nath's kneecap and his forehead just above it. He breathes in the familiar scent of Nath's skin, the slight overlay of sweat from the exertion of moving in.

Jack looks up. His gaze sticks on the thick bulge extending Nath's briefs. His mouth waters, and he forces himself to look beyond it. He runs his eyes up Nath's stomach, the rise and fall of his chest as he takes gasping breaths. The length of his neck, where Jack can see his Adam's apple bob when he swallows. His face, that face that has filled Jack's dreams for so long, that is looking down on him with desire and affection.

Jack can feel Nath's knees trembling under his hands. He smiles at Nath, trying to let him see how much he feels in this moment, and bends to kiss the inside of each of Nath's knees before reaching for the waistband of his briefs.

Nath groans, deep in his throat, when Jack pulls his briefs down and takes away even that slight touch on his dick.

Jack grins up at him and presses a single kiss to Nath's hip bone before he draws Nath's briefs all the way off and nudges him to turn around.

He starts at the back of Nath's knees, pressing kisses into the hollow of them, flicking his tongue out to taste the skin there. He slides his hands up the front of Nath's thighs to keep him steady while he kisses and mouths his way up the back of his thighs.

Nath startles and lets out a bit of a laugh when Jack nips at the place where his ass meets his thigh. Jack grins against his skin and licks over the place he bit. That gets a different noise from Nath.

 

When the semester ended and summer came, Nath went home. He escaped the intently not-hovering press of his parents as much as he could. He spent hours in the library rereading the books about space he'd loved as a child. He swam in the lake and at the pool, and gave Hannah the best summer of her life by taking her with him whenever she asked.

He spent every moment he could with Jack. In the evenings, after he'd had dinner with his family and after Jack's mom had left for the hospital, he walked down the block to Jack's house. They listened to records. They watched TV pressed as close together on the couch as they could bear to be in the heat. They made out until their lips were sore. They had sex, fast and frantic, or slow and sweet, spending hours in Jack's bed.

On weekends, they went to the movies or to the mall. People looked at them sometimes, strangers and the occasional person they'd gone to high school with. Nath imagined they were wondering what cool rebel Jack was doing with the nerdy, Oriental boy who was most well-known for having a dead sister. For his part, Jack seemed to take it in stride with the same lack of concern for what anyone thought of him that he'd always carried himself with in high school.

Sometimes on weekends they walked down to the lake and went swimming, where they could share the feeling of gliding through the water and use the excuse of roughhousing to put their hands on each other.

Nath's parents found themselves bemused by Nath's sudden friendship with Jack, but they dutifully invited Jack and his mother over for Fourth of July.

While Nath's father grilled, his mother asked Jack's mother intent questions about her work at the hospital. Jack and Nath sat in the sun on the grass with cold Cokes. Hannah flitted between those three points. The sensation of attention was still new to her, and she soaked it up like a sponge, whether it was Dr. Wolff asking her what she wanted to be when she grew up or her father letting her flip hot dogs or Jack asking, "What was your favorite song in Grease?"

Later, after the sun began to set, they walked down to the lake. Nath's mom walked with Dr. Wolff, then his father with Hannah, and Nath and Jack followed behind the rest. Nath's dad and Hannah carried blankets that they spread out on the grass beside the lake to watch the fireworks once it was truly dark.

Nath looked over as one of the fireworks exploded into a starburst of blue to see Jack looking at him with a soft smile. Another firework went off, shading Jack's skin with red.

Jack bumped his shoulder against Nath's. "Happy Fourth of July."

Nath bumped back, and then let his shoulder rest against Jack's. He wondered, for a moment, what Lydia would think of it, and then let himself enjoy the feeling of Jack's shoulder against his and the bursts of color in the sky without dwelling on the thought.

 

Jack stands. He rests his hands on Nath's hips, and presses his mouth to Nath's shoulder.

Nath turns his head and, despite the awkward angle, kisses Jack as deeply as he can.

Jack presses against his back to return the kiss. He's hard, and he lets Nath feel that for as long as the kiss lasts. Then he walks Nath to the bed, where he guides Nath to turn around.

Nath reaches for him. He says, "Please, Jack," and Jack lets Nath pull him in for another kiss. They kiss for a long moment, arms around each other, holding on and rubbing against each other.

Jack pulls away, hands gentle on Nath's shoulders. "Lie down." He nudges Nath's legs apart and kneels between them. Then he starts at Nath's knees and works his way up. He leaves kisses along the inside of Nath's thighs while he runs his hands slowly up the outside. When he gets to the top of Nath's thighs, he skips up to kiss down Nath's hip bones and run his fingers down the crease where Nath's thighs meet his torso.

Nath groans. "Jack." He reaches down to rub a hand over Jack's hair, asking without demanding.

Jack nips at Nath's skin. Then he moves down between Nath's legs. He cups Nath's balls in his hand and then licks, drawing a different sort of groan from Nath. Jack keeps licking, tasting and feeling every inch of the skin over Nath's balls, until Nath is gasping and moving under his mouth.

Jack keeps Nath's balls cupped in his hand when he licks up Nath's dick, root to tip. Nath groans deep in his throat, and Jack takes his dick into his mouth before he has to ask. He takes as much of it as he can, sucking while he does. He bobs up and down, cradling Nath's balls all the while. He's gotten good at it, from a summer of getting their hands and mouths on each other whenever they could. He's spent so much time, too, getting Nath to this point. He's not sucking for very long before Nath comes.

 

On a Saturday night near the end of summer, Nath told his mother he won't be home for dinner and walked down the street to Jack's. Jack threw an extra blanket in the back of his car and they went to a diner for dinner. There were other teenagers there, people they went to high school with home for the summer, groups of kids from years below them. They got looks, the way they did anywhere they went. Nath did his best to ignore them, which was easier to do with Jack across a table holding his attention.

They lingered, talking and laughing over the dregs of their milkshakes, but they left eventually. They got into Jack's car, and Jack drove them out of town. He took them down back roads where they saw a few cars, then one or two, then none.

"Where are we?" Nath asked when Jack pulled off the road into a field. There were no lights they could see once Jack turned off the car.

Jack shrugged. "The middle of nowhere. No one ever comes here. The stars are really clear without the lights."

They spread the blanket from Jack's car out on the ground. The sun hadn't fully set yet. They watched the sky's changing colors, and then Nath watched the way Jack's skin looked under the sky's changing colors.

Jack caught him looking and smiled, pleased.

They had sex under the darkening sky, and put their clothes on afterwards to lie side by side and look up at the stars.

Nath pointed out constellations and galaxies in a quiet murmur, answering all of Jack's questions with enthusiasm and the bone-deep satisfaction that came with having someone be interested in the thing he loved most.

"Maybe we'll see a falling star," Jack said. "We can make wishes."

"They're not really stars," Nath said. "They're meteors, space rocks, burning up in our atmosphere. Some of them don't burn up all the way, and they land on Earth. There are some of those in the labs at school."

Jack smiled at his explanation. "Maybe we'll see a meteor we can make wishes on." He reached over and let his hand rest on Nath's chest. "I wish you didn't have to leave."

Nath couldn't wish the same thing; he loved being able to study everything related to space he could, and he needed the distance from his family. He could wish for part of the same thing, though. He took Jack's hand and tilted his head so it was resting against Jack's shoulder. "I wish you could come with me."

Jack squeezed his hand while they looked up at the sky, and then he turned on his side to look at Nath. "I could."

Nath turned on his side to face Jack. "You could?"

"Yeah. I'm not going to school or anything, and my mom will be cool with it and take care of the dog if we can't take him. There are contractors in Boston. I could get a job." Jack swept his thumb across the back of Nath's hand. "We could get an apartment." He looked hopeful, as much as Nath could see him in the dark.

An apartment would mean Nath didn't have to be careful about how or when he touched Jack, and Jack would be there all the time. He could show Jack all the things about Boston that he hadn't been able to show him yet. He could stay in Boston next summer and still see Jack.

"You would really do that?" Nath asked. "You would leave and come to Boston?"

Jack said, "Yes." Then he decided to be brave and said, "Yes. I love you, Nath."

 

Jack moves up the bed, running his hands up from Nath's waist to his shoulders as he goes. He presses a close-mouthed kiss to Nath's lips, then shifts to lie next to him. He strokes his hand over Nath's chest while Nath's breathing slows.

Nath turns his head and pulls Jack in so he can kiss him without moving. Jack leans into it, opens up for Nath to kiss him deeply over and over again. He's hard against Nath's thigh.

Nath tugs at his shirt. "Take your clothes off."

Jack pulls his shirt off and drops it on the floor behind him. Nath helps with his jeans, getting them unbuttoned and unzipped. There are too many hands, the two of them getting tangled up in each other, for it to be graceful, but Jack wriggles out of his jeans and his briefs. He kicks them to the floor.

Nath puts his hand on Jack's hip, pulling him close. Jack groans when he rubs up against Nath skin to skin. He's been so focused on Nath that he hasn't noticed just how turned on he is.

Nath holds him close, arm wrapped around him, foreheads pressed together. Their breath mingles between them. Jack's eyes keep falling shut as he rubs against Nath's hip, and he jerks them open because he wants to see Nath while they do this for the first time in their new apartment.

Nath runs his fingers through Jack's hair, pushing it away from his face. "Jack," he says, soft and almost reverent. "I love you."

Jack's hips jerk and he comes with a shuddering cry. Nath holds him close, lets him press his forehead into Nath's shoulder. Nath's hand runs up and down his arm.

Jack's too overwhelmed to say anything just then. Nath can feel the words he isn't saying filling up the room. He feels them for all the years they live in that apartment, as if they've infused the very paint on the walls.


End file.
